Call for Papers: Organizational issues in esports

At a time when esports are undergoing rapid expansion and institutionalization across global markets (Scholz, 2019), this thematic issue invites contributions from Organization Studies, Management Studies and the Social Sciences that examine esports as a complex organizational phenomenon. Despite growing scholarly attention on esports across entertainment (Taylor, 2021), information technology (Hamari & Sjöblom, 2017), traditional sport (Jenny et al., 2017; Holden et al., 2017) business models (Newham et al., 2025; Mangeloja, 2019) and the digital economy (Woodcock & Johnson, 2019), dominant narratives and analysis continue to fixate on market size and consumption metrics. This thematic issue moves beyond these economic framings to foreground the organizational, social and political dimensions of esports – such as inclusion, power, ableism and others – that remain systematically underexplored (Brock, 2023).

The fields addressed by this thematic issue have only recently begun to scrutinize those dimensions in depth (e.g. Tjønndal et al., 2022; Riatti & Thiel, 2022; Brock, 2023). Emerging research highlights that the organization of esports entails not only the interaction of economic and political actors (Scholz, 2019), but also critical issues regarding the bodies (Ekdahl & Ravn, 2019), the management of material spaces (Franzò, 2024), labour precarity (Johnson & Woodcock, 2021), gender inequality (Piggott & Tjønndal, 2024) social inclusion and disability (Ripetta & Silvestri, 2024; Hayday & Collison, 2020). Viewing esports as a complex organizational field, therefore, requires examining how they are designed, governed and practiced by a constellation of micro and macro actors, from platforms and publishers to public institutions or players. Esports thus emerge as hybrid spaces where labour and play, production and consumption, corporeality and virtuality and the local and the global cultures intertwine in ambiguous and contradictory ways.

Although these studies have advanced the field considerably, they rarely engage in a sustained and systematic way with the power asymmetries, forms of governance, regimes of visibility and invisibility and social issues that structure the esports field and sustain its organizational functioning. Crucially, such an inquiry must also attend to how axes of race, gender, class and ability shape participation and organizational practices within esports more specifically. To this end, we encourage submissions drawing on critical frameworks – feminist new materialism, posthumanism, sociomaterial and adjacent literatures (e.g., Gray, 2020; Noble, 2018; Wajcman, 2004; Haraway, 1991; Davis, 1981) – whose contributions to the organizational study of esports remain largely underexplored. Rather than treating these frameworks as alternatives to organizational theory, we see them as productive interlocutors: they could sharpen the analytical tools that organizational scholarship – from institutional theory (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983; Scott, 2008) to practice-based approaches (Suchman, 2002; Orlikowski, 2000; Gherardi, 2000) and structural analysis (Mintzberg, 1979) – brings to bear on questions of labour, governance and inclusion. Disability studies (e.g. Siebers, 2008; Garland-Thomson, 2002) further extends this inquiry by exposing how ableist ideals of performance are normalized within esports organizations. Adopting this combined organizational perspective shifts the inquiry to who participates, under what conditions and at what cost – questions that, as we argue below, also carry significant methodological implications for how research in this field is designed and conducted.

Consequently, we invite prospective authors to consider esports as an organizational phenomenon rather than merely as an expression of competition; to examine how esports are organized and practiced. Beyond raising theoretical and empirical questions, esports also pose significant epistemological and methodological challenges to organization studies. The hybrid, digital, and transnational nature of this phenomenon calls for a critical reflection on how research is designed and conducted. Traditional fieldwork assumptions – around presence, access and the boundaries of the organizational site, are complicated by the distributed and platform-mediated character of esports ecosystem. We therefore welcome contributions that engage with digital ethnography, participatory and collaborative methods, and reflexive approaches that account for the researcher's positionality within gaming cultures and esports in general. We also encourage scholars to experiment with innovative forms of writing and representation that can do justice to the fluidity, embodiment and contradictions that characterize esports as an object of study.

We welcome contributions related, but not limited, to the following themes. We are particularly interested in papers that address labour and precarity, governance and power relations, social inclusion and equity and critical or methodologically innovative approaches to esports as an organizational field:

• Labour and employment conditions of esports athletes
• Gender inequalities and ableism in esports organizations
• Bodies and disability in esports practices
• The management and organizing of material, virtual, and hybrid spaces
• Inclusion, exclusion, and accessibility in esports organizations
• Platformization, algorithmic control, and new regimes of visibility
• The role of IP ownership and publisher monopoly in shaping organizational governance
• Organizational and power relations among actors
• Careers, subjectivities and professional transitions in esports
• Tensions between play and work in esports organizations
• Esports, social justice and organizational responsibility
• Critical feminist theoretical perspectives on esports
• Innovative methodological approaches to the organizational study of esports

With this Call for Papers, we aim to create an interdisciplinary space for dialogue that contributes to consolidating esports as a relevant field of research for management, organization studies, and the social sciences, offering new critical perspectives on a phenomenon that is often celebrated yet still poorly understood in its deeper organizational dimensions.

Submitting your paper 

Papers may be submitted electronically from 8 April 2026 until the deadline date of 10 April 2027 (final deadline) at: Submissions | puntOorg International Journal.

Papers should be no more than 45 pages, including references, and will be blind reviewed following the journal’s standard review process. Manuscripts should be prepared according to the guidelines published on the journal’s website. When feasible, manuscripts submitted in languages other than English will be assigned to reviewers proficient in those languages. Nonetheless, an accompanying English translation is required to make the work accessible to a wider audience of reviewers and readers.

A paper development workshop will be held online via a password-protected Zoom link in autumn 2026. Participation in the workshop will not be a guarantee of acceptance of the paper for the thematic issue, and neither is the workshop a requirement for consideration of a paper for the thematic issue. For further questions about the thematic issue please use the guest editors’ contact email.

Lead Editor responsible for coordinating the working group: Silvio Ripetta (silvio.ripetta@unina.it)
Co-Guest Editors:
Tobias Scholz (tobias.scholz@uia.no)
Thomas Newham (tom.newham@ntu.ac.uk)

info@puntoorginternationaljournal.org

References

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Ekdahl, D., & Ravn, S. (2019). Embodied learning in e-sports: The case of professional Counter-Strike players. Sport, Education and Society, 24(1), 1–14.

Franzò, S. (2024). Gaming houses and the spatial organization of esports labour. Organization, Advance online publication.

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Gherardi, S. (2000). Practice-based theorizing on learning and knowing in organizations. Organization, 7(2), 211-223.

Gray, K. L. (2020). Intersectional tech: Black users in digital gaming. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press.

Hamari, J., & Sjöblom, M. (2017). What is eSports and why do people watch it? Internet Research, 27(2), 211–232.

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Holden, J. T., Kaburakis, A., & Rodenberg, R. M. (2017). The future is now: Esports policy considerations and potential litigation. Journal of Legal Aspects of Sport, 27, 46–78.

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Ripetta, S., & Silvestri, A. (2024). Exploring the embodied experience of disabilities in eSports: A study on First Person Shooters. puntOorg International Journal, 9(1), 80-103.

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Taylor, T. L. (2021). Watch me play: Twitch and the rise of game live streaming. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Tjønndal, A., Fossøy, J., & Skauge, A. D. (2022). Governing esports: Regulation, legitimacy, and institutional work. European Sport Management Quarterly, 22(5), 1–21.

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